Sunday, June 28, 2015

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Happy Sunday, lovely readers! I'm delighted to tell you that MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANT is now out in ARCs (aka Advance Reader Copies)! And yes, I do have one to give away to one reader who leaves a comment on the Jungle Reds site! And wow, the book's publication date is October 27, 2015 — that's just four months away! As our Hank would say, "Whoa."

The other books in the Maggie Hope series are doing well, too. MR. CHURCHILL'S SECRETARY is now in its 16th printing, the other titles are in multiple printings, and Barnes & Noble has come up with a nifty bookshelf display. This one is from our local B&N, but I hear there are others?

So, in between getting Kiddo through the last of 4th grade (sniff), getting ready for summer (Rhode Island!), and copy edits for MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANT (hair-pulling and nail-biting), I've also been researching and writing book #6 in the Maggie Hope series, THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE.This is now two books ahead for readers — and I want to be careful not to spoil anything for anyone. But I can say that THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE will follow Maggie from Washington, D.C. back to London. And in it, we'll meet a new baddie — the Blackout Ripper — a serial killer (or, rather, a "sequential murderer," since the term "serial killer" wasn't in use back then) who preys on the smart, ambitious, professional women.I knew Maggie would be back in London for this book — and so I began to think her struggles against the patriarchy as a smart and capable woman weren't getting enough page space, the way they did in the earlier books. And so I deliberately created a killer who was targeting strong professional women — the women who were to be sent abroad to fight in the SOE (the Special Operations Executive — the British black ops organization Maggie has been working for). Since the killer is targeting women of SOE, Maggie's brought in by old friend Peter Frain of MI-5, to work alongside her old frenemy, Mark Stafford — and also a new character, a detective from Scotland Yard. [ When I began the project, I became obsessed with the literature of Victorian London. Many of the books I'd already read (women in Victorian lit was my specialty as an English major in college). But I wanted to go back to the really gothic books. So I chose DRACULA and DR. JEKYL AND MR. HYDE. DRACULA, I'd read in junior high or thereabouts, but it was still plenty scary. As well as unintentionally hilarious: "Get Mina recipe for chicken paprika."]And then there's Jack the Ripper, himself. I started with THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF JACK THE RIPPER, then on to 1880: LONDON MURDERS IN THE AGE OF JACK THE RIPPER, and lots more. Like many, I knew the story without really knowing a lot of facts. The details are grisly.But — why the fascination with Jack the Ripper, you may ask? Good question. Jack keeps coming up in the public consciousness as well as literature and pop culture for many reasons. Any plot about about the Jack the Ripper (or a new Ripper) contains coded discussions of the dangers of unrestrained male sexuality, misogynist fears of female sexuality, and censure of female autonomy. And so I turned to the scholarly book, A CITY OF DREADFUL DELIGHT, a feminist interpretation of the Ripper murders and their effects. The book also explores how Jack the Ripper (and his many fictional variations) has acted as a catalyst for women’s anger against male violence against women in the public sphere. As author Judith R. Walkowitz argues: "The Whitechapel murders have continued to provide a common vocabulary of male violence against women, a vocabulary now more than one hundred years old. Its persistence owes much to the mass media’s exploitation of Ripper iconography. Depictions of female mutilation in mainstream cinema, celebrations of the Ripper as a 'hero' of crime intensify fears of male violence and convince women that they are helpless victims."And so, in other words, if I'm going to take on the Ripper myth as a feminist writer with a strong heroine, I'd better tell it in a radically different way. And that's my goal. In the usual Ripper stories and films, the Ripper's challenger is a man — a detective or a journalist usually. The female victims are peripheral to the hunt/catch story. In this newest Maggie Hope book, I want to turn that traditional Ripper narrative on its head.

Reading about Jack the Ripper led me to books about our own first serial killer here in the U.S., H. H. Holmes, including Erik Larson's excellent THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY. Jane Addams, the urban reformer who founded Chicago’s Hull House, wrote about the time period — which has its parallel in London of World War II — “Never before in civilization have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from the protection of the home and permitted to walk unattended upon the city streets and to work under alien roofs.”

I'm also doing research on women in police force during World War II. Yes! It's true!

And not just researching, but writing, too — it's just a wee bit too early for me to feel comfortable showing any pages. But please rest assured there are about 100 rough pages written, 100 more sketched out pages, and a whole slew of notes and ideas. Maggie's met a lot of horrific people in wartime, but this — a serial killer — is a first. And it's scary. (I'm scaring myself sometimes, which must be good, right?)Dear lovely readers, please leave a comment here to be entered to win an ARC of MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE!

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Hello, lovely readers! I'm delighted to show you the cover design for the next Maggie Hope novel, MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE, which is coming out October 27, 2015 (so not too long to wait!):

I hope you love it as much as I do! I adore Fala, of course, as well as the ghostly figure in the window.... And, um, I'd really like Maggie's coat, please! (With a faux-fur collar, of course.)And what's on the inside is progressing nicely as well. The manuscript is now typeset and in page proofs. So my job is to go over the book one last time.Look! It's a book! (Amazing what typesetting will do.)

And I'm particularly proud of the dedication. I asked Miss Edna about the political and racial events of the 1940s often, and it led to great discussions. I treasure the memory of them.

As you may know, I'm also working on the next book in the Maggie Hope series, THE QUEEN'S ACCOMPLICE,and just returned from a two-week research trip to London and Beaulieu, in Hampshire. (It's pronounced Bew-lee — go figure!) Fantastic trip and I have so much to share that it will take additional posts, but one of the most amazing thing was visiting the real-life SOE secret agent offices in London and "finishing school" in Beaulieu. I never forget for a moment that although I'm telling a story with a fictional protagonist, real women and men sacrificed everything to be dropped behind enemy lines and, as Winston Churchill instructed "set Europe ablaze!" Here are a few of the sites and plaques honoring the SOE in London:

On what used to be one of the main SOE offices on Baker Street.

Now it's a lighting store and anonymous office space.

This building was home of the SOE and Free French. It's now banking offices.

This is the plaque in memory of the Free French and SOE

And also in Beaulieu:

This is the SOE memorial on the grounds of Beaulieu Abbey, originally built in 1204

A close-up of the inscription

The outside of what's left of Beaulieu Abbey

Inside the domus. It was originally a dormitory for monks. During World War II, dances were held there and it also served as sleeping quarters for soldiers heading to Normandy.

U.S. soldiers getting some rest before the invasion of Normandy.

I'm in awe of the agents' bravery and courage — and so many of them didn't return. But, thanks to their efforts, along with the Free French and La Résistance, so many telephone lines were cut, bridges blown up, and roads blocked before D-Day by the "underground army" that the Allied invasion of Normandy had just that more going for it.Hats off.

Lovely readers — are you familiar with the work of the SOE? And are there any war memorials that are particularly important to you? What's your personal connection?

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

I must say a big thank you to British-born Blitz-survivor Phyllis Brooks Schafer, who has been kind enough to read my manuscripts and share her knowledge and experience of World War II Britain. (I remember specifically when I had the radio program "It's That Man Again" on at a particular day of the week and time — and Phyllis corrected me: "No! It was on on Mondays at 8:30!")

Phyllis is a friend of my college thesis advisor Susan Meyer (who also wrote a novels, hers for children called BLACK RADISHES, set during World War II) and we met through Susan on Facebook. Phyllis and I became friends and we met in person in the Bay Area last year, where I was introduced to her two lovely cats and had a delightful tour of Berkeley, where she lives and works.Today (here and on Jungle Red Writers) Phyllis shares with us details about growing up in England during the war.PHYLLIS BROOKS SCHAFER:The world changes. Pre-1948 was a different world, defined for me in many ways by the things I didn’t have rather than those I did have. Life in England was more “primitive” than that I met in the U.S. when we arrived in Seattle at the end of 1948, but many of the things I didn’t have in England were also rare in poorer families in the U.S. at that time. Remember this reflects my roots – in a working class family with next-to-no disposable income, but the “No”s I list were common to large parts of the population beyond my immediate class limits. And of course this list would be as shocking to people under the age of 60 in England today as it is to those living in Berkeley.

What did not form part of my personal life?

No plastic – Oh, the occasional bakelite bangle or drawer knob, or a fragile celluloid floating duck. But none of the common plastics we live among now. None. No plastic wrap, no plastic bowls, no plastic bags, no sheet plastic to substitute for glass in picture frames, no plastic toys, no plastic pieces for games. Mah jongg tiles and dominos were made of ivory. Checkers were made of wood. No plastic table cloths. No plastic cases for typewriters, radios, clocks. No plastic typewriter keys. Instead ceramics, glass, wood, metal, rubber.

No television – I have a dim memory of seeing a small postcard-size TV screen with programing when I was about 6, but BBC TV went off the air in 1939 and did not return until about 1947. (When I first came to Seattle in 1948, TV transmission was just beginning there.) Instead of watching TV we listened to the radio, with its choices of plays, children’s programs, music, etc. The BBC, and no commercial channels. There only two BBC stations until 1947, and all tastes were catered to at various times through those two outlets, with everything from pop music to opera, from comedy to talks (more like lectures) on serious scientific subjects. We learned the hours when the things we liked to listen to were on, and the entire nation went quiet around the time of especially popular comedy shows. And there was reading, reading, reading. Mostly from the public library, but the local newspaper store ran a little lending library – books could be rented for a penny or two a day, mostly mysteries and romances.

No central heating – We heated the living room of our small house with a coal fire, and in the two bedrooms upstairs we had the ultimate in modernity – electrical heaters in the wall.Yes, the house could get cold. That’s why God made sweaters!And we folded a blanket to keep out the draft that whistled in under our front door when the winter wind was in certain directions.

No checks – For working class people, it was a cash economy. My father received his pay in cash, in a pay packet, once a week. (Still much the same in Japan!) Savings were not usually in a bank, but rather in a post office savings account. There was no bank in our community – one had to go into town for a bank. By the time checking accounts started to come in, it was usually the man of the house who wrote them. I had to teach my mother how to write a check when she divorced my father in her late 50s in Pasadena.

No bills coming in the mail – The rent man came round once a week to collect the rent and write down the receipt in the rent book. The electricity and gas men came round every few weeks to empty the meters inside the house, meters we fed with coins to continue the supply of power. The milkman brought his account book with him and collected payment about once a week. Same for the newspaper delivery man. The coal man had to be paid at the time of delivery. No money, no coal, no heat.

Almost no synthetic fabrics – Shirts, blouses, etc., were made of cotton, and outer clothing of wool. Silk or linen was beyond the means of the average person. Nylon stockings came in during the war years with the Americans stationed in England – the best present a girl could get from her Yank boy friend. Otherwise stockings were either expensive silk, or made of a kind of cotton knit called lisle. There was some rayon for dresses and underwear, but it was not common. At the end of the war, surplus parachutes were briefly much in demand: they were white nylon and made good wedding dresses (though there was a rumor that nylon should not be worn when you were having a photo taken - you would appear naked in the resulting pictures).

Almost no electrical appliances – We had only two electrical outlets in our little living/diningroom. None in our “front room” or the bedrooms, bathroom, etc.We had an electric iron and a radio. Period. When my mother or I ironed, we could listen to the radio. There was no electrical outlet in the kitchen. No electric clocks. Alarm clocks, in their metal cases with a bell on top, had to be wound up each night. The big clock in the living room was an eight-day clock, and my father ritually rewound it every Saturday morning. No toaster. No electric kettle, no electric mixer or blender. And, of course, no microwave. Bread was either toasted at the fireside – a long handled toasting fork let you hold a slice close to a glowing coal till it was brown, and then you had to turn it over and toast the other side – or under the small grill on the gas cooking stove.

No refrigeration – Not even an ice box. Ice was something you broke on ponds and puddles, or slid on in the streets. I didn’t see ice cubes or block ice until I came to the U.S. To keep milk from souring in the summer, we stood the bottles in a bowl of water in the empty fireplace and draped a cloth over it to absorb water and cool as it evaporated. We shopped every day for meat, cheese, etc. – just enough for that day’s meals – so we had very few leftovers. In any case there was no aluminum foil, no waxed paper, no plastic film to wrap and cover leftovers – but there was cooking parchment to line cake tins for making fruit cakes.

No washing machine – My mother boiled clothes in a large metal container (called a “copper”) that lived under the wooden draining board beside the kitchen sink. It had a gas heating unit to bring the water up to the right temperature. She stirred the clothes with a wooden stick, and pulled them out to scrub them in the kitchen sink on a ridged scrubbing board. Buckets held washed clothes as she rinsed them, once again in the sink, in cold water. We did not have a wringer, so she wrung out everything by hand – including the sheets. (Our neighbor did have a wooden wringer turned by a big handle, but my mother was too proud to ask to use it.)

No dryer – The washed clothes had to be carried outside and pinned up onto the washing line that was then raised up into the air with a heavy wooden prop with a Y-shaped end. If we were lucky, the clothes dried before it started raining again. Otherwise we had to carry things inside to dry on racks in the tiny living room. In winter the sheets and clothes froze hard as boards. We had to be careful taking them down – they could actually break. But freezing and thawing did get rid of a lot of moisture. The smell of clothes taken down from the line on a warm summer day was wonderful. I remember burying my head in the sheets just for the joy of smelling them.

No vacuum cleaner – But then nobody we knew had fitted carpets. Rather the floors were wood or covered with linoleum, with area rugs on them. We carried the rugs outside, hung them over the washing line, propped them up higher, and then beat them with a carpet beater until the dust no longer came out of them. The carpet on the stairs to the second story was a long runner held in place by metal rods that could be slipped out of their holders. Periodically we removed the rods and carried the whole runner outside for the ritual beating.

No restaurant meals – Well, very, very rarely we might have a snack in a café (or, as adults, in a pub) while shopping in town. Even before the second world war, with its stringent food rationing, meals in restaurants, even of the most modest sort, were not part of working class life. I never sat down to a dinner in a restaurant with a table cloth and a menu until I came to Seattle. The only takeaway foods were fish and chips (bought from the fish shop on the nights when they were open and frying, and wrapped in newspaper to bring home for consumption) or pork pies and slices cut for each customer individually from a big, bone-in ham, which some butchers had for sale. In bigger towns or in the cities, there were often stands or carts on the street – something like the taco trucks on International Boulevard in Oakland – selling sausage and mash, or the Cockneys’ favorite winkles, little cooked sea snails that one picked out of their shells with a pin and dipped into vinegar, to be eaten standing up or on a nearby park bench. The only big treat meal eaten out by working class people with some pretensions to good taste was the occasional tea, usually in a dainty little tearoom: pots of tea, with little sandwiches, cakes, and, in summer, strawberries with clotted cream – only a fond memory for much of my life until the post-war austerity began to lift slightly.

No private telephones – In the small community where I lived, only the doctor had a phone. Maybe to call an ambulance if one was needed? There was no one local to call him. If he was needed, someone ran down to his house-cum-office to get him or to leave a note. The local policeman also had a phone, in the police station office inside his house – but that was half a mile away. There was one public telephone box at our nearby string of small shops, the bright red British telephone box with the glass paneled sides like the model that you see in “Doctor Who.” And those were all the phones I can remember in my immediate environment. I never made a phone call till I came to the U.S. Once I was going to high school I got to know a few people who had phones, people who lived in the local town. But they were all people whose parents (usually the fathers) needed a phone for work purposes. We wrote letters or walked over to talk directly to the people we needed to see.

No out-of-season vegetables and fruits – For six years the war made merchant shipping a dangerous endeavor used only for essential supplies (so no bananas), but even before the war items like fresh pineapples or asparagus were available only in London or other big cities and bought by professionals and other upper-class people. Our treats – pineapple and the like – came in cans, and those had only started to come back more commonly on the market by the time I left England in 1948. But we did have the joy of seasonal fruits and vegetables appearing in the shops as the year wore round. Too many potatoes, carrots, cabbages, rutabagas, and brussels sprouts – but always apples – during the winter. And then late spring: strawberries, cherries, tomatoes, green peas, green beans, new potatoes – each sweet and delicious.

No supermarkets as we know them. Even if you registered to buy certain rations at Sainsbury’s (groceries, meats, dairy), you could not buy there things like cleaning supplies, or soap, or the hundred other things we expect to pick up in our local Safeway store (or Tesco, etc., in England).

I’m quitting here – though things that people like us didn’t have keep coming to mind: no gears on bicycles, no Christmas trees, no credit cards, no yogurt, no typewriters, no pasta (except for canned spaghetti) – not start talking about things like computers!

And then there were the things that we had, but that we owned only one of – Where are the scissors? I need the sharp knife. Who hid the screw driver? That’s another story.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

"You're going to Scotland and you don't like whiskey or play golf? Isn't that kind of a waste?"

No. No indeed.

I may not drink whiskey (or whisky) or play golf for that matter — but it truly was one of the best trips of my life.

I fell in love with Scotland.

The Scottish trip was to research my newest Maggie Hope book, THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT. I spent a week in Edinburgh and then a week in Arisaig (on Scotland's west coast, near Port William).

The week in Edinburgh was to research a plot line featuring Sarah Sanderson (remember her from MR. CHURCHILL'S SECRETARY?) Well, Sarah's still touring with the Vic-Wells Ballet (the precursor to the Royal Ballet), when a bevy of ballerinas become ill with a strange disease — or is it foul play?

Meanwhile, Maggie — completely gutted from her last mission to Berlin where she did a number of unsavory things and is facing the moral fallout — is back at her old training camp in Arisaig, this time as an instructor.

Here's where things get interesting. The actual manor house where the SOE (Special Operation Executive) agents trained is now a bed and breakfast, called Arisaig House. So I was not only able to go to Arisaig House, tour the buildings and walk the grounds, but I was able to stay there.

Readers, I loved it.

I saw exactly where all the agents did their paramilitary training. I saw the bridge they pretend bombed, the huts where the ammunition was kept, the beach where they threw grenades. ("You might see the odd grenade — they wash up on shore occasionally," said the gardener.) There are memorials to the brave women and men who trained there both at Arisaig House and also in the town of Arisaig.

Meanwhile, I was the only guest at the inn, so the family who runs it (and their three golden labs) pretty much adopted their odd American novelist for the week. I felt like an exchange student. It was fantastic.

Now, I might not be much for whiskey, but I would like to raise a glass today to toast Scotland — and I'm going to create a summer cocktail, using gin.

Yes, gin.

Gin's having a bit of a renaissance in Scotland, with small-batch, handcrafted boutique gins using indigenous Scottish herbs and spices. Hendrick's is getting better known here in the U.S. (a gin that tones down the juniper flavor in favor of notes of cucumber and rose) — but there are others also worth seeking out, such as Edinburgh, Botanic, and Caorunn.

And so, without further ado, I'd like to present a summery cocktail, perfect for sipping while reading THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT — The Arisaig, a variation on the classic Gin and Tonic.

The Arisaig Cocktail

Here's what you'll need for ingredients:

2 parts Scottish gin (or any gin, really — but humor me)

2/3 parts freshly squeezed lime juice

1/2 part Elderflower liqueur (I'm partial to St-Germain, but I hear the Bitter Truth is excellent)

Mint leaves

Cucumber slices to garnish

Tonic water

And here's what to do:

Add mint to glass and break with muddler. Add ice. Add other ingredients. Top with tonic and give it a still. Garnish with cucumber slice.

And, as they say in Gaelic, Slàinte!

FROM THE PUBLISHER: For fans of Jacqueline Winspear, Charles Todd, and Anne Perry, The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent is a gripping new mystery featuring intrepid spy and code breaker Maggie Hope. And this time, the fallout of a deadly plot comes straight to her own front door.

World War II rages on across Europe, but Maggie Hope has finally found a moment of rest on the pastoral coast of western Scotland. Home from an undercover mission in Berlin, she settles down to teach at her old spy training camp, and to heal from scars on both her body and heart. Yet instead of enjoying the quieter pace of life, Maggie is quickly drawn into another web of danger and intrigue. When three ballerinas fall strangely ill in Glasgow—including one of Maggie’s dearest friends—Maggie partners with MI-5 to uncover the truth behind their unusual symptoms. What she finds points to a series of poisonings that may expose shocking government secrets and put countless British lives at stake. But it’s the fight brewing in the Pacific that will forever change the course of the war—and indelibly shape Maggie’s fate.

“You’ll be [Maggie Hope’s] loyal subject, ready to follow her wherever she goes.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET AGENT is available at your local independent bookstore, library, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.

About Me

New York Times-bestselling and Barry Award-winning Susan Elia MacNeal is the author of the Maggie Hope Mystery series from Bantam/Random House. Her books have been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, Dilys, Barry, Sue Federer, and Bruce Alexander Awards.